Landscapes (and Cornflakes) with the Fall of Icarus:Derek Boshier @ the Gazelli Art House.

On the surface, it's fairly hard to make direct links between K-pop (the South Korean music genre), Icarus (the figure from Greek mythology who flew too close to the sun, causing his wings to melt, and him to fall into the sea and drown), and Kellogg's (the American multinational cereal company who brought us such household favourites as Coco Pops, Bran Flakes, Rice Krispies, Puffa Puffa Rice, and, of course, Corn Flakes).

But, somehow, Derek Boshier's Icarus and K Pop exhibition at the Gazelli Art House in Mayfair manages to tie all these elements into one whole. A whole that may not be particularly cohesive but one that certainly has provided Boshier with license to make some eye catchingly good work.

K POP - The King (2021)

Boshier's not new to his. He's eighty-four years old and after attending the Royal College of Art with David Hockney, Allen Jones, and Peter Blake he appeared in Ken Russell's famous 1962 documentary Pop Goes the Easel alongside Blake and Pauline Boty. He later went on befriend Russell as well as, even more impressively, David Bowie.

For Bowie, he created the album sleeves for both Lodger and Let's Dance and he also did The Clash's second album, 1978's Give 'Em Enough Rope. Joe Strummer having been a former pupil of Boshier's when he taught at the Central School of Art and Design in the early seventies.

KDramaBuzz - Buzz (2021)

K POP-POP (2020)

So he's got form and, you'd imagine, he's earned a bob or two along the way. Enough to live in LA these days, anyway. That's fair enough. Anybody who's received Bowie's seal of approval has probably got something going for them in my book - and I did really enjoy this fairly small show - spread across two floors.

But if there was an overarching concept behind it, it's one I failed to grasp. Reading the bumf the friendly invigilator invited me to take, I discovered that this series of paintings was inspired by both William Blake's The Ghost of a Flea and Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. I struggled to see the Delacrox but some of the pencil works did have a very small element of Blake in them.

K POP - King Horse (2021)

K POP:King of Mask Singers (2020)

Even though I'd never have picked up on that without reading it first. The 'Pop Art' elements of Boshier's work are, at least, a lot easier to get a grip on. The huge Kellogg's K in the K Pop paintings is not too far removed from the floating Pepsi logos he included in his earlier works (some of which remind me of the Llamasoft computer game, Attack of the Mutant Camels) and K pop itself is so 'pop' that it even includes the word pop in its name.

Greek mythology is rarely considered a 'pop' subject though and it certainly confused a fellow visitor to the gallery when I attended on Saturday. He asked who the artist was. 'Derek Boshier' came the reply. To which he countered 'is he Greek?'

I've never really had Boshier down as a typically Greek name (he's actually from Portsmouth) but the confusion obviously stems from all the Icarus stuff and Boshier's Icarus works seem to be handed down from the Greek myths via Pieter Brueghel the Elder's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Not that there's anything particularly Greek about the assorted motley establishment figures that fall from sky, and hopefully - we imagine - from favour, in Boshier's work.

Secretly at Night (2020)

Icarus Goes Digital and Remembers the Extension of the Senses (2020)

While the satire on mobile phones and modern technology is a little passe, elsewhere Boshier has cobbled together an unusually diverse netherworld of masked singers, chalk giants, owls, men with jigsaw legs, fokloric monsters, military hardware, crashing cars, and pig headed businessman in an attempt, one assumes, to show the folly of our modern obsessions.

If Icarus can fly too near to the sun, if his wings can melt, so can we no matter how hard we try to defeat nature with technology.

The Cern Abbas Giant and Corporate Giants (2020)

What Was Your Day Like (2020)

Icarus Remembers (Beware of the Military/Industrial Complex)  (2021)

It's not the most advanced political message but then it's not supposed to be - and it doesn't need to be. The nature of pop art is to catch you eye quickly and leave an impression. The bright reds, yellows, and pinks of the K pop paintings certainly do that (and they're as capable of giving you a sugar rush as a bowl of Frosties with a tablespoon full of Tate & Lyle on top of them) and so do the Icarus works.

Ignore the Kenny Everett lite joke of a businessman in stockings and suspenders and instead look at the falling men, falling horses, and falling standards of our ruling class as they descend to their watery deaths. They've attempted to fly too close to the sun. Those who chose to sail the tranquil blue waters in their neat triangular sailed yachts seem as if they'll be safe. Both from the failing, and falling, world of capitalism and from the rising waters of climate change. In Boshier's world, justice is done. In the real world, things are far less straightforward.

Icarus and Political Republican Friends (2020)

Icarus and Macho Friends (2021)